A true story of two fake Christmas trees

In November/early December of 2008 my then girlfriend Kim was aghast at me not having a Christmas tree.

We’d been together essentially a year at this point and she didn’t want my house to be unChristmasy.

I really didn’t want a tree, but not because I despise Christmas decorations, I just figured that I’d be getting her tree next year.

While she didn’t know what my plans were, things were in motion and there was a ring sitting in a box upstairs waiting until after the holidays were over.

I found it tacky at the time to say “oh yeah, your gift is you get this ring if you decide you want to marry me.” I waited until January.

Anyway, I ended up with a fake Christmas tree as I couldn’t protest too much. It held the box with the ring through Christmas and New Year’s and on January 2nd 2009 I asked a very sick and snotty Kim who was binge watching True Blood whether she’d be interested in marrying me.

Next Christmas we were stuck with two trees. I’m not sure if I posted the Craigslist advertisement in 2009 or 2010 but I mentioned all of the above and met a lady in the E Thomson Kroger parking lot in Nashville and offloaded my once-used tree for a discounted price. She got the story, I got 16 cubic feet of space back in my house.

I bid adieu to the tree, and we moved on to using Kim’s significantly better fake Christmas tree.

In 2013 and 2015 a couple of people joined the household. While 2015 Christmas was not particularly crowded the kids have been getting more and more stuff and the house by Christmas 2016 was tight.

There’s no physical room without stacking furniture on furniture to place a tree.

We decided to downsize the tree rather than downsizing the family. A smaller, more efficient tree was ordered. This lead to realizing there was once again a 16 cubic feet box with a tree that needed to be offloaded.

The family tree – 2009-2017

I mentioned the above in a Craigslist ad for a used tree posted about eight years since my first ad, and someone contacted me wanting to make memories with that tree.

I didn’t ask too much about them, I find it creepy when CL people want to know my business, so I try not to creep someone out.

I sat the tree out in its box on the porch when I left for work yesterday, I came home finding the tree gone, a $25 in dollar coins and a five dollar bill.